"Is the Revival over?' asked the Curate. "Re-vival! it's past owt. Raally, it flays me to think on't, for I'll say it's downreet blasphemy! lartle lads and lasses crying out, 'I've got it! I've got it!' meaning nowt else, poor misguided bairns, than t' HOLY SPIRIT O' GOD! Eh, but it's sad wark.' "I suppose you have never been present on any of these occasions?' "Nivver set foot i' one i' a' my life. But,' with a twinkling glance at his wife, Chrissy ha'e. Speak up, missus; thou wasn't flayed to gang, thou shouldna' be flayed to speak on't.' "I'm noa flayed,' said his wife, though with a little vexation in her tone; thou knowest I went to please Bessy.' “Weel, weel, tell us a' aboot it. They tuk' haud o' thee, didna they? and asked thee-whatten? Come, missus, let's hear.' 666 'My measter knaws it made me badly for days, sir,' said the old woman, rather ashamed to have her adventure displayed before' 't' parson.' 666 Why?' 'Well, it war' making varra' light o' holy things and awfu' thoughts. First there was a great tea-drinking, and then one o' t' preachers offered up prayer, and we sang a hymn, and then I think they telled experiences.' "Confession,' suggested the farmer. "And then they put them on what they ca' stool o' penitence, and there war' a deal o' talking and asking how your soul felt?' and raving and shouting, and crying out, 'He've got it! she's got it!' and I canna' mind me o' mair. I ofttimes wish I'd nivver seen it.' "Ah! thou'lt be wiser for the rest o' thy life,' said her husband. 'Three chance bairns, sir, last revival,' he continued. If parents would but see what siccan things as camp meetings and revivals grow to, they'd haud their bairns back.' "I suppose one great charm is the great licence allowed in all these sectarian followings. I fully believe myself that there is a restraining awe in our churches, which even the most irreverent will feel, and which to an ill-regulated mind is intolerable. In their meeting-houses, of course they are quite free from this.’ 666 'Nay, then,' said the farmer, seeing Mr. Rivers about to leave, 'you'll do us t' favour to tak' a glass o' yaal, and a bite o' cheese and bread ?" "Thank you; I shall be very glad to accept your offer.' "He did not say how scant had been the hospitality shown him at the vicarage, after his long walk to and from Foxhow. "One more word, if you please, sir,' said the old man, as Mr. Rivers shook hands with him, after doing full justice to the far-famed Lasserdale cheese and no less excellent bread and 'yaal.' "We've saved a gay bit o' brass for Agnês; I'll noa deny it; nay then, I warked for't, and I'se thankfu' to GOD for a blessing o' my labours; but it woan't wrang my lass if we take some on't for t' new chapel, eh, sir?' "Far more likely to bring a blessing on you all,' said the Curate. "I believe it, sir; and so me and my missus wished to tell ye that, when ye want it, there's five-and-twenty pund for t' chapel.' "Thank you. I am sure it can hardly be a greater pleasure to you to give it, than it is to me to receive your offering, for our dear LORD'S sake.' "Thou'rt a decent lad,' said the old farmer to himself, as he watched Bernard across the fields. 'Eh, then wha in their senses wad ha'e sent sike a mon as t' auld priest to govern parish, shutting himsen' up, and nivver so much as gi'e ye time o' day. It's a burning shame he shou'd be t' Vicar! If his business here ain't wi' our souls, what did he tak' t' living for? it's a scandal to t' Bishops to allow on't. Curate does a' t' wark, and yon lang-legged, mane-sperited, good-for-nowt, with his set-up lass o' a missus, tak's a' t' brass. T' Church wark ain't weel managed someways, but I ain't going to let Methodys say sae, neither."" -Pp. 148-151. REVIEWS AND NOTICES. Tracts for the Day. Edited by the Rev. ORBY SHIPLEY. 1. On Absolution; 2. Indulgences; 3. On the Seven Sacraments. Long mans. THESE are anything but what are ordinarily met with under the name of tracts; still less are they meant for "a day." They are solid and learned "essays," and are only, we suppose, not inserted in "The Church and the World" because they are too theological for the general reader. At the present time we need all kinds of vehicles of instruction, clergy and laity being really equally uninformed on the great doctrines of the Faith. It is clearly The Tract on Absolution needs little or no comment. and learnedly reasoned, and ought to be read by all who have doubts respecting the use of this ordinance. The tract on Purgatory we shall probably consider in a separate article in our next number, and possibly we may also revert to the one on the Seven Sacraments, which contains an able statement of the Church's Sacramental system. Essays on the Re-union of Christendom. By Members of the Roman Catholic, Oriental, and Anglican Communions. Edited by the Rev. F. G. LEE, D.C.L. With a Preface by Dr. PUSEY. London: Hayes. It will not be considered any disparagement, we feel sure, by the contributors to this volume, if we say that its chief interest centres in the fact that Dr. Pusey has been induced to supply a preface to it. For some years it appeared as though he had withdrawn himself from any active share in carrying on the Revival, which all admitted that he had been so largely instrumental in initiating, and not a few surmised that he looked on its more recent developments with something like jealousy. These unworthy imaginations are now happily silenced by Dr. Pusey's bold advocacy of the two forms which the Revival has now assumed, of Ritual and Re-union. The speech which he delivered the other day at the annual meeting of the English Church Union will have inspired confidence into many hearts; and in the same way this preface, breathing so strong a spirit of faith, will be accepted with great thankfulness. We quote one passage, which will indicate the general line that he takes: "In so mighty a work as the Re-union of Christendom we cannot measure its approach by any calculations of human time. Nay, it will perhaps not sensibly approach, until it is. If it were man's work, one might look out for negotiations, conferences, the expression of the minds of the influential, the disposition or indisposition of powerful religious bodies. We might be discouraged by censures, disheartened by mistakes, sickened by the supercilious tone of some in high station, cowed by rebuffs. But since the work, if wrought at all, must be the work of GOD, then all these human difficulties are but the mountains which have to be levelled as His pathway, the crooked places which have to be made straight. Absence of love and prayer and holiness are alone the real hindrances to Re-union. Before love and prayer all human obstacles are but as the barrier which hems in the accumulating weight of waters when their full weight is gathered, the barrier will give way or be surmounted. 66 ment. Hindrances, then, or difficulties, or misconceptions, nay, one may say, indispositions, are but ordinary things. Opposition is so much encourageFor misconceptions, when removed, wonderfully clear the sight, which they before impeded. The eye sees at once, when the cataract has been taken away. Opposition evinces men's sense of the inherent strength of that which it opposes; indisposition, which, from its dull sluggishness, is the weariest, most immoveable drag, is but one of the 'veteris vestigia fraudis' which prayer will in time quicken into life. "Obstacles! why, what else but obstacles were to be expected, in a work which is for the glory of GOD, which aims at, prays for nothing else, than the removal of barriers which have suspended for eight centuries the intercommunion of East and West and have for above three centuries kept us involved in the consequences of that original piteous quarrel with the East with which we personally had nothing to do, and those which severed from the Roman communion almost the whole Saxon element of Christendom? Matters are not ripe for negotiation, so it is no matter of surprise that an undefined statement of gravamina, such as I myself made, should, under powerful adverse influences, have been silenced at Rome, and that the book was put into the Index, in company with two others which contained blasphemies against our LORD'S All-Holiness. This last, if it be so, would seem to us a needless aggravation of pain. Yet a book has ere now been put into the Index, written by one in the Roman communion, approved by Catholic authorities, because it contained 'Wholesome advice from the B. V. to her indiscreet worshippers.' No ground, then, has been lost, because no definite negotiations have been made. A book has simply been prohibited which contained matter both on that most tender subject and on the personal infallibility of the Pope, which were not likely to be approved by a Roman congregation. They were Italian devotions, (although domesticated in England,) to which I mainly excepted; the exception, if noticed at all, was not likely to meet any favourable reception in Italy. From the very fact, too, that I imagined that I was writing upon what were not articles of faith I may have given pain and offence, where I did not mean it. The idea itself, that the Council of Trent might be legitimately explained, so that it could be received by Anglo-Catholics, and that our articles contain nothing which is, in its grammatical sense, adverse to the Council of Trent, remains untouched and unrepudiated. And this is the intellectual basis of a VOL. XXIX. 2 Y future union, when GOD shall have disposed men's hearts on both sides to look the difficulties in the face, and the presence of the common foe, unbelief, shall have driven them together. Since Bossuet found no difficulty in accepting an exposition of the Augsburg Confession, much less need there be any as to the Thirty-nine Articles, which are free from the special difficulties of Lutheranism. And when that explanation shall have been offered and accepted, the office of the Anglican Articles, in maintaining clear doctrinal truth on the one side, and in explaining our insulated position on the other, will have ceased. The structure of some of them shows manifestly that they were intended to be temporary. This ad-interim office over, they would obviously cease to be."-Pp. xxv-xxix. The Sacred Life, (Hayes,) is a novel undertaking, viz., an attempt, by Dr. IRONS, to give the events of our LORD's Life in his (the Editor's) own words, merely just referring to the Miracles and Parables, which are afterwards tabulated according to their date. The Church of England in her Fourfold Aspect, Catholic, National, Established, Protestant, (Bosworth,) bespeaks by its title the views of its author, who is intentionally orthodox, though of course we do not agree with his phraseology. We can recommend a good Sermon, by the Rev. W. J. EDGE, called The Bodily Worship of the Glorified. (Masters.) It is a good exposition of the fruits of the Incarnation. Mr. RADFORD THOMSON has published what he calls An Elementary and Introductory Text-Book to the Symbols of Christendom. (Longman and Co.) We welcome it not only for its intrinsic value, but also for the probability that it will reach to a class of readers who are as yet unfamiliar with the subject. Those who possess the First Part of the Sarum Missal, edited by Mr. GEORGE FORBES, will be glad to learn that after a long interval the Second Part has appeared, with a promise of the Third Part "in a few days." It is really a great undertaking for a private individual, and the fruits of immense labour are visible in the Notes. We trust that the Editor and Publisher will not be allowed to lose by it. It is really a book which no Catholic should be without. The work may be procured of Stewart, King William Street, Strand. NOTICE TO CORRESPONDENTS. We have received a letter from Mr. C. T. CORRANCE, whose pamphlet on "Episcopacy "we recently reviewed, to say that he is a Clergyman of the Church of England, and that he has never read a line of the works either of Richard Baxter or of Edward Irving, whose opinions we stated that he appeared in some measure to adopt. The first mistake it was certainly his own business to have guarded against. For the rest it would seem to us better that he should have read the writers referred to, and then he would, perhaps, have been less enamoured of his supposed discoveries. 343 STOPFORD AND BRADY ON THE IRISH SUCCESSION. The Unity of the Anglican Church, and the Succession of Irish DR. Brady has supplied us with another illustration of the vitality of historical fiction. The pamphlet in which he gave to the world his theory as to the Apostolical Succession of the Irish Hierarchy bore about it evident marks of haste both as to conception and execution, and love of paradox. Archdeacon Lee's crushing rejoinder, which we have already noticed, may perhaps have assisted for a time in promoting the circulation of the brochure referred to. But we cannot help thinking that when the author contemplates his fourth edition (and now a fifth enlarged, which we have not seen,) he must feel somewhat like Katterfelto "with his hair on end at his own wonders," wondering at the mare's nest he has discovered. We trust Dr. Brady undertook reluctantly the ungracious duty which he has thus discharged. Indeed the existing state of the Irish Church makes any disproof of her historical position peculiarly ungracious and damaging just now. To be sure we seem as far off as ever from that coalition of English Radicals and Irish Ultramontanes, which if it is ever brought about will issue the deathwarrant of the Irish Ecclesiastical Establishment; but we cannot hesitate to avow our conviction that there are many staunch Churchmen in England who have abstained from any act or word injurious to the status quo of the Church of Ireland, from the conviction that that Church represents the original foundation. The effect of Dr. Brady's theory if left unquestioned and undisproved will be to set these persons free; and even more perhaps to impart that additional vigour to their opposition, which is infused by the feeling of having been hitherto misled and deceived. These, however, are not the only class who robbed of a gratissimus error" will suffer from the theories of Dr. Brady. There has existed for some years in Ireland a simulated Churchmanship very curious in itself, which has rested all its claims for the Irish Church as by law established upon the very basis which Dr. Brady has endeavoured to overthrow. Claiming to possess the ministerial ovala divinely transmitted through S. Patrick, this simulated Churchmanship, with unabated Protestant fanaticism, has disclaimed and denounced any transmitted dúvaus. The doctrine of Sacramental Grace is as hateful as ever; Bible-contradicting and GoD-denying exceedingly. The one historical argument against Roman aggresVOL. XXIX.-AUGUST, 1867. 2 z |